Busi­nesses hon­oured at cham­ber awards

The win­ners of the an­nual Kawartha Cham­ber of Com­merce & Tourism Awards of Ex­cel­lence were named Thurs­day.

Cham­ber board pres­i­dent Tonya Kraan, of Strexer Har­rop & As­so­ci­ates, con­grat­u­lated the re­cip­i­ents as well as all who were nom­i­nated. With over 80 nom­i­na­tions there was a lot to cel­e­brate.

The cer­e­mony, held at Lake­field Col­lege School, also in­cluded the an­nounce­ment of the cham­ber's Cit­i­zen of the Year. This year that hon­our was given to Cindy Win­dover, who was rec­og­nized for her end­less sup­ply of en­ergy to help or­ga­nize and ad­vise many groups, set­ting an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple for all. Through her vol­un­teer ef­forts with Habi­tat for Hu­man­ity and Abbey­field So­ci­ety, she has been an ac­tive pro­moter for af­ford­able hous­ing. As co-owner of Win­dover Plumb­ing she has ad­vo­cated for im­prove­ments to the ap­pren­tice­ship process. For sev­eral

years Win­dover has vol­un­teered on Kawartha Cham­ber com­mit­tees and the board of di­rec­tors in­clud­ing a term as pres­i­dent.

As one nom­i­na­tor noted, "If ev­ery­one did one 10th of what she does, there would be no more vol­un­teers needed." The award was spon­sored by RBC.

In ad­di­tion, judges elected to hon­our Au­drey Von Bo­gen with a spe­cial award for Life­time Achieve­ment. She has co-owned Shamb­hala B&B for close to 15 years and her con­tri­bu­tions to mul­ti­ple causes in the Buck­horn and area com­mu­nity span decades. Three terms were spent in mu­nic­i­pal pol­i­tics as coun­cil­lor in the for­mer Town­ship of Gal­way, Cavendish and Har­vey. Com­mu­nity Care, Buck­horn Com­mu­nity Cen­tre, Beau­ti­ful Buck­horn and the Buck­horn Dis­trict Tourist As­so­ci­a­tion have all ben­e­fited from her in­volve­ment for over 20 years. She has held lead­er­ship roles for many in­clud­ing chair of the Buck­horn Re­gional Health Cen­tre Foun­da­tion for five years. The award was spon­sored by ISL In­sur­ance Bro­kers.

Nine other awards were pre­sented at the event in­clud­ing Lake­field Food­land for Out­stand­ing Busi­ness Achieve­ment and Emily Wilkins, Ad­ven­ture Out­fit­ters, as Young Pro­fes­sional.